196 lines
7.3 KiB
Markdown
196 lines
7.3 KiB
Markdown
[[!meta title="Linux on the Lenovo X201"]]
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## Introduction
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The Lenovo X201, the successor of the X200, has arrived on my desk for some
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days. Every new personal computer makes me think about which Linux distribution
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to choose.
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### Requirements
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I started with a list of aspects a good distribution would handle well:
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* Straighforward and automatic installation
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* Support for crypted home, swap and probably even the root filesystem
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* Good package management
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* New packages (Linux > 2.6.18 for instance...)
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* Easy to integrate own packages into
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* Either via an own mirror or into the main distribution
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* Good documentation
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* Friendly and helpful community
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After some minutes thinking about the requirements, I've been aware
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that testing all those aspects, and defining them properly, takes more
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time than to just give the usual suspects a try.
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## Debian
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### Lenny via fai
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As I'm running Debian here in the [[ETH|eth]], my first approach
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was to netinstall Debian via fai, which failed with a kernel panic,
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because it could not find the root device.
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This is normally an indicator, that the network card is unknown,
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but debugging it from a netinstall is not so easy. Thus I decided
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to give the installation from an usb stick a try.
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### Lenny via usb stick
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Firstly I put the Debian Lenny Installer 5.0.2 via
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zcat ~nico/boot.img.gz > /dev/sdd
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onto the usb stick. Booting the installer worked, but
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it did not find any network interface, either.
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Well, we all know that Lenny, as being Debian stable currently,
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is almost outdated when it's released, so let's give Debian
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testing a chance.
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### Squeeze
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I remember that installing Debiang testing means to retrieve
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the installer from some subpage on [debian.org](http://www.debian.org),
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that contains the **debian installer**. As usual, it cannot be easily
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found by selecting the usual interesting links on debian.org.
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A [search via google for debian installer](http://www.google.com/search?q=debian%20installer)
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resulted in the
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[correct link for the debian installer](http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/).
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It has been alarming that the
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[same search on debian.org](http://search.debian.org/cgi-bin/omega?P=debian+installer&DEFAULTOP=or&HITSPERPAGE=10&language=en) does *not* result in the correct result on the first
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result page!
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Using the
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[Debian Squeeze Alpha1 release](http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz) of the debian installer resulted in a
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funny, though not very productive installation:
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* When selecting the language English, country Switzerland, it is not possible to
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select the locale ch_DE.UTF-8!
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* The Keymap [Neo 2.0](http://www.neo-layout.org/) is not in the list of available layouts.
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* The installer cannot find the iso (Well, there's none, it was started from an usb stick...)
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* "Detect network hardware" did not find any ethernet card.
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Ok, no Debian for the X201 currently.
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## Ubuntu
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I am currently running Ubuntu on the X200, so giving it a try
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on the X201, too.
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### 10.04 Beta2
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Beta2 is out, what's more loved than early betas and alphas?
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I was trying to write the ISO (!) to a usb stick via **usb-creator-gtk**,
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which fails with the following kernel messages:
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[1320073.833304] end_request: I/O error, dev sdd, sector 0
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[1320073.845771] sd 72:0:0:0: [sdd] Device not ready
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[1320073.845777] sd 72:0:0:0: [sdd] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
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[1320073.845786] sd 72:0:0:0: [sdd] Sense Key : Not Ready [current]
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[1320073.845795] sd 72:0:0:0: [sdd] Add. Sense: Medium not present
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[1320073.845804] end_request: I/O error, dev sdd, sector 0
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[1320073.845829] unable to read partition table
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Writing to a SD-Card however worked (although: reproducing that made
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usb-creator-gtk more often fail than succeed: It simply did nothing,
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said there's not enough space free and did not reformat the device).
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Happily I can select the Neo 2.0 keyboard layout during the installation,
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but not encrypt volumes in the desktop installer, because it's only
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supported with the alternate installation, which I think is a major fault:
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Dear Ubuntu developers, include encryption via dm-crypt/cryptsetup
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into your desktop installation, please.
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The enhanced privacy is worth the added complexity!
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The installer detected the network card and after the reboot wireless
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lan was working perfectly and xorg was running with the gnome desktop. And as
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a extra bonus for me, also real transparency of terminals was working!
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On the other hand, I've a shiny new Ubuntu installation which is probably
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not really what I want: I never use gnome and gdm is fine, but not really
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needed.
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But well, the main reason to give another distribution a try, is that
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there's a new kid on the block:
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## Archlinux
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Archlinux was brought to my attention some time ago, as it is
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the first distribution, that includes [[ccollect|software/ccollect]]
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(not in the main, but aur repo).
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Having a look at archlinux, there are some points that straightly coming
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to attention:
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* Arch is x86 only (32 and 64 bit, though)
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* It does not use .rpm, nor .deb packages
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(Slackware users, do you feel reminded? :-)
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* KISS (keep it simple and stupid)
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* At least one distribution understands why others have so many problems.
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* Least changes to upstream packages possible
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The last point is a very interesting one for
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[[me, as a FOSS developer|about/foss]], because it ensures that
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problems are reported back to me and not corrected elsewhere.
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Dear arch developers, thanks for that decision!
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For more information, have a look at
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[The Arch Way](http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way).
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### 2009.08
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Once again, written the installer to an usb stick, booting
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and - guessed it - the installer does not detect the network interface.
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Ok, there must be something like Debian testing, some kind
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of snapshot, daily or whatever release.
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### 2010-04-05 testing image
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After I had been searching around, I found
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[an entry in the the forum](http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=739859)
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and got a hint on [IRC](irc://irc.freenode.org/#archlinux) that
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there are [testing ISO images](http://build.archlinux.org/isos/)
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available.
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The interesting thing is, the iso image can be copied
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directly to an usb stick, because grub is being used!
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The installer detected the network card and I gave
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the auto prepare disk setup a chance, which creates partitions for
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* /boot (ext2!),
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* swap,
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* / and
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* /home.
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Interesting, but not what I would choose, as there no need for
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/boot on x86 for a long time
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([see lba32 option for lilo](http://www.google.com/search?q=lilo%20lba32)).
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It also warned me, after I recreated the partition table, that there
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is no /boot partition.
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Dear arch developers, why do you depend so much on /boot?
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But in general, the arch installer can be used straightforwarded and
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it says what it does (really like that). The encryption support is
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a bit strange, as it does not prepare the crypttab config, which
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could easily be integrated into the installer.
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Arch has an easy integration of crypttab into the boot process,
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but there are two drawbacks:
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* Arch does not support Neo 2.0 keyboard layout
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* And the keyboard layout is loaded ***after*** I was asked for the
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passphrase of the crypted devices.
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At the end, Archlinux installed fine on the X201 and I keep on using
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it, to give the distribution in general a try.
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